ROTORUA HOSPITAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 750, 24 August 1929, Page 9

ROTORUA HOSPITAL

GOVERNMENT DECIDES TO BUILD CLOSING KING GEORGE WARDS (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, Friday. The first step in the direction of modernising the sanatoria of New Zealand’s neglected spa, Rotorua, will be taken when plans for a new hospital are completed. They have now been ordered by the Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward. The King George V. Hospital on Pukeroa Hill is to be done away with, according to a decision of the Cabinet announced by Sir Joseph as Miuister in Charge of Tourist and Health Resorts, today. Sir Joseph said it was intended to erect a building in the Government grounds to take the place of the present sanatorium and to serve as a hospital for Rotorua cases. The present King George V. Hospital was a temporary structure erected to deal in war-time with returned wounded soldiers, said Sir Joseph. The hospital was now in a bad state, and was very expensive to maintain, while the existing sanatorium was out of date and needed replacing. To have the two institutions combined under the one roof would do away with the present duplication of staffs and would in many other ways tend to more economical and better working.

Sir Joseph added that he had given instructions for the immediate preparation of the plans of the necessary buildings.